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1 Psychiatry Anti-Psychiatry Re-visited
To understand Anti-Psychiatry one has to first understand Psychiatry. Psychiatry is primarily a social institution which removes from society the "mentally ill and attempts to subdue their symptoms using drugs. Patients are diagnosed, labeled and drugged. Emphasis is on "Normalization". The suppression of difference, originality and vision - Conformism - making obedient robots that do not create anxiety in others.
Anti-Psychiatry emphasis is on making the individual whole. Diagnosis and analysis are replaced by uncritical listening. Labeling is replaced by witnessing the individual as an individual. Anti psychiatry tries to reverse the rules of the Psychiatric game.
THE PSYCHO-DYNAMICS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA
David Coopers key discovery was that the Schizophrenic condition is the result of a "significant inward voyage". By this he means the individual looking inwards - searching for what is wrong with himself or why he is the way he is. In 1925 Sigmund Freud discovered the other dynamic involved - regression. Regression can be defined as returning to a former state. In fact regression is not limited to this life but includes past lives. While regressed the individual re-experiences past memories as if they are now and reacts to current impulses as he would of then. Personality development is reversed.
These two dynamics work together like this. The individual is excessively introspecting. He or she then begins to regress. The regression results in a progressive deterioration in personality. A progressive detachment with what we agree is reality as he or she returns to earlier times. As the condition progresses the introspection gets more frantic as the subject becomes more desperate to find the cause/solution of/to his or her progressively worsening condition which in turn results in further introspection, regression and worsening.
As the regression progresses the more severe symptoms of Schizophrenia are released from the unconscious mind and the subject is gradually overwhelmed by the contents of this mind.
TREATMENT
"All you need is a witness is a central anti-psychiatry concept." By this David Cooper means that the patient needs someone who is listening to them and knowing them without saying anything or making an interpretation. Listening to what subject has to say. Try and understand what is being said. Do not look for some hidden meaning or speculate on why this or that is being said. Keep it real simple. As David Cooper says "telling the truth is a symptom of mental illness." A communicative subject, while in a psychotic break, will tell anyone willing to listen what he is actually experiencing. Please do not dismiss what is said as Paranoia, delusions etc. It may well be but to the subject it is real. Telling the subject that he is wrong, deluded etc will result in shutting up the patient and pushing him further into his madness
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| rlakeman | Critical Psychiatry Conference 2007 | 0 | May 1 2007, 9:25 AM EDT by rlakeman | ||
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Thread started: May 1 2007, 9:25 AM EDT
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People visiting this page may be interested in a conference on psychosocial health being held in September 2007 at Dublin City University, Ireland. Special guests include Dr Tom Szasz. Please visit: http://www.dcu.ie/health4life/conferences/2007/
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